My Thoughts About the Apple Tablet and the Future of the Press
My latest Macworld article is an editorial about what I think the Apple tablet will do for the press.
“Should Apple roll out a tablet on Wednesday as it’s expected to do, the device could contain the ability to save newspapers and magazines from their demise. Kirk McElhearn looks at what a tablet could mean for newspaper and magazine publishers and the people who read those publications.”
After spending some time being quite enamored with the Google model of the future, I have just recently come around to seeing the merits of the view represented by your article.
I think that’s difficult because I–and I’m sure a lot of other people–have conflated two things. The first is something close to hatred for big media. They have the two characteristics of bullies: they are mean, and they are stupid. Disney, Universal, Knight-Ridder, et. al.–they richly deserve to die for their contempt of their customers and often their creative producers. If Google hastens that death, bully for them.
But the second is the idea of the free internet. Or, not really “free”, but paid for by turning the internet into one big billboard. This is–whether they themselves like it or not, because I think that Google does indeed mean well–where the business model is inexorably leading. And I realize I’d rather have the opportunity to pay a reasonable price for what I want and need, rather than live in a cyberworld of inescapable advertising.
So iTunes has (at least in principle, some have taken issues with significant details) provided a model where, yes, EMI can sell their virtual CDs (to take a classical music example), but the Milwaukee Symphony also find a venue to sell recordings of their radio broadcasts.
I think–and hope–that people start to become more conscious of how much money Google/YouTube, Facebook, etc., are making from their free labor, and thereby make a more conscious decision regarding whether that’s a deal they want to accept.
Kirk, well said, and well written editorial. I agree with 100 percent of what you wrote. Danny in Taiwan, reading as fast as I can. The iTab might be a gamechanger, yes, and also save the press. As a longtime practitioner of the snailpaper kind, printer’s ink in my veins, I hope so. I would hate to see snailpapers go the way of the dodo bird. Hopefully, the iTab will be the savior!
One note, though, Kirk, about free. Rich biz people shell out money for WSJ and other reads like the Economist because they can deduct the subscription from their expense accounts as a write off for tax purposes, so tthey can afford to buy such reading websites. Most of us poor church mice cannot afford it. That’s need to be pointed out. Right?
While that’s certainly true about “Rich biz people” paying for the WSJ, are you saying that you couldn’t afford, say, $50 a year for a news site? Or $100? Have you ever bought a daily paper? I was actually stunned to see that the NYT has doubled the price of its paper in the past two years, and that it’s now $2 a copy! So if you did by the paper daily, that would about $900 a year (because the Sunday paper is $5).
Kirk, I could afford the $50 or $100 for an annual new site, but I wouldn’t sign it. Count me out. I buy my local English daily here in Taiwan, 24 pages, local and global news, opeds and commentary from all over, Guardian, NY Times, LA Times, enough for me, and it just costs me US$0.45 per day, and sometimes i just read the paper standing up at the news kiosk and put it back after reading it. If there’s new worth reading, I buy the paper, but not every day. I supplement this daily print read with TV news and CNN and online news surfing, and print out the articles and editorials worth reading on paper. I dislike reading on these infernal screens. This is NOT reading. This is what I call “screening.” Okay, but yuck! Give me paper or give me death!
But other than my comments above, your math above is correect and wow, I didn’t realize that, $900 a year for the printed snailpaper of the Times! Ouch! I guess anything could happen!
My feeling is that the NYTimes will cancel its news paywall before the 2011 start date. The Guardian is watching all thi, before making up its mind. I am sure the NYTimes will use this announcement now as a trial balloon, and will come back down to Earth before next December. Stay tuned, as we say in the radio biz. Before there were internets!
by the way, Kirk, as an aside:
The [B]Newspaper Death Watch[/B] blog webbed by Paul Gillin has a post today about [I]“snailpapers”[/I] — as a term of endearment, although some criticism is implied by the term, too, obviously — here: (scroll down to item)
http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/ny-times-swallows-paywall-pill.html
ITEM: [He] has come up with a new word for newspapers. He calls
them “snailpapers.” [But] the longtime newspaperman insists this is a
term of endearment, not derision. [B]He thinks maybe if newspapers poked
more fun at themselves instead of getting all righteously indignant
about new media, they would generate more sympathy.[/B]
[B]Newspaper Death Watch: [/B][I]chronicling the decline of
newspapers and the rebirth of journalism[/I]
Snailmail, coined in 1982. Snailpapers, coined in 2009.